Scott Ian, My hero

Sometime in the late 90's, I had a mission for work involving delivering a digital camera and laptop to Jerry Cantrell of Alice in Chains, who at the time was opening for Metallica with his solo band on their summer tour.  Off I went to Giants Stadium with my little pass hours before the bands were supposed to hit the stage. 

Eventually I found Jerry alone in his room backstage strumming a guitar.  Being a huge, huge Alice fan for many years I didn't know exactly what to say when standing directly in front of him, but at the time he and his band were throwing in covers from Dark Side of the Moon and all I could think to say was how I appreciated that and thought it was cool... he nodded and said "thanks".  Rock cool.  He told me that Sean Kinney, drummer for Alice and Jerry's touring band, should really receive the laptop and camera so I went off to look for him.

I found Sean on the tourbus.  He's an interesting guy... when I asked him what he wanted his password for his Earthlink dial-up account to be, he said Apu, the name of his pet monkey.

He invited me to eat with the band at catering... well, it was a full buffet, not just a deli tray.  There I was with Sean, Chris Dowd from Fishbone, Chris DeGarmo formerly of Queensryche... it was a killer collection of musicians I dug.  Color me happy & thrilled to be there.

You're probably wondering what this has to do with Anthrax, I bet.  Eventually I stopped all my backstage-yness and went off to meet friends who were in the crowd for the Metallica show... Jerry and band were great as openers.  And then the main attraction was about to commence... for those who have not witnessed them, Metallica puts on a great, long, inspiring show.  Three hours of rock & sweat.  

My friend Jason and I were banging our heads to whatever song when he pointed out to me who was on the field in front of us... I took a look in the dim light of the night and I could make out the guy simply by his size and bald head... it was Scott Ian of Anthrax.  Anthrax, even before they got undeserved attention during the whole post-9/11 scare, were a relatively well-known hard rock/metal/thrash band... and Scott was their face.  

But I will never forget how this guy was just out with the people, dancing alone by himself in a wide open space.  He was a fan.  He could have been backstage nibbling from the deli tray and hitting on groupies, but he was worshipping with the rest of us in front of the rock gods.